Thursday, February 23, 2017

Apple’s newest 15-inch MacBook Pro proved controversial when it launched at end of last year. It was late and featured changes to the design that everyone instantly had an opinion on. From a nearly singular approach to the ports on its sides to the Touch Bar strip that gives you tool-specific buttons and control surfaces – instead of the expected touchscreen – it seemed everyone on Twitter could quickly tell you whether these were good or bad (mainly bad it seemed).

Forming a useful opinion about things that change the way you work or interact with a piece of hardware takes time, even for a seasoned reviewer. After spending a month using the new MacBook Pro – using tools that support the Touch Bar such as Photoshop – I can say that the new MacBook is neither as bad as its decriers have insisted nor as innovative as Apple has claimed. It’s just like the previous model, but faster and with a moderately useful new feature. The real but isn’t an inherent problem with the MacBook Pro itself – it’s that its competition from the likes of Dell and HP superseded it last year, and Apple hasn’t really caught up.

Apple MacBook Pro 2017 review: Performance

This MacBook Pro was almost as late in arriving as Japandroids' last album. Dell and HP upgraded their pro laptops – the Precision 5510 and ZBook Studio G3 – to Intel’s then new 6th-generation Core i7 processors at the beginning of 2016. Apple’s arrived nearly nine months later, having not been updated since mid 2015. So late, in fact, that laptops with 7th-generation ‘Kaby Lake’ chips have just been announced – including the Precision 5520, which will ship in the next couple of months.

Then, either the MacBook Pro will be outdated again – or Apple will release a minor update for the new chips. Both of these could be reasons not to buy this MacBook Pro – though Kaby Lakes is rumoured to not include much in the way of a performance boost. We’ll get back to you about this when we’ve seen a pro-spec Kaby Lake laptop.

Our review MacBook Pro is top-of-the-line. It has a 2.9GHz Core i7-6920HQ processor, 16GB of RAM, an AMD Radeon Pro 460 graphics chip (which turns itself off when you’re in plugged in, leaving Intel HD 530 graphics system built into the motherboard) and a fast 1TB NVMe SSD. This takes the base price of £1,957.50 (plus VAT) up to £2,275.

For comparison, we tested it against 2016’s best laptop – Dell’s Precision 5510 – and also its other key rival, HP’s ZBook Studio G3. Both of these had a 2.8GHz Xeon E3-1505M chip. Both have Nvidia Quadro M1000M graphics chips – though the Dell’s chip as 2GB of RAM and the HP’s has 4GB. The Dell had 16GB of RAM (though unlike the MBP you can increase this to 32GB), and the HP had the full 32GB. Both had 512GB SSDs, but the ZBook Studio’s drive – like the MacBook Pro – was an NVMe drive for faster reading and writing of data.

In the Cinebench rendering test – which is based on the processor alone – the MacBook Pro proved to be slightly slower than the either the Dell or HP laptops.

The new MBP outpaced the Dell Precision 5510 in Cinebench’s realtime 3D test, which is unsurprising as Apple’s AMD chip has twice the RAM of that of Dell’s Nvidia. Against the more equally matched (in terms of RAM) HP ZBook Studio though, the older Quadro chip bested the new AMD Radeon Pro 460.

The founders had initially limited the website's membership to Harvard students; however, later they expanded it to higher education institutions in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford University. Facebook gradually added support for students at various other universities, and eventually to high school students as well. Since 2006, anyone age 13 and older has been allowed to become a registered user of Facebook, though variations exist in the minimum age requirement, depending on applicable local laws.[9] The Facebook name comes from the face book directories often given to United States university students.[10]

Facebook may be accessed by a large range of desktops, laptops, tablet computers, and smartphones over the Internet and mobile networks. After registering to use the site, users can create a user profile indicating their name, occupation, schools attended and so on. Users can add other users as "friends", exchange messages, post status updates and digital photos, share digital videos and links, use various software applications ("apps"), and receive notifications when others update their profiles or make posts. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups organized by workplace, school, hobbies or other topics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends". In groups, editors can pin posts to top. Additionally, users can complain about or block unpleasant people. Because of the large volume of data that users submit to the service, Facebook has come under scrutiny for its privacy policies. Facebook makes most of its revenue from advertisements which appear onscreen.

Facebook, Inc. held its initial public offering (IPO) in February 2012, and began selling stock to the public three months later, reaching an original peak market capitalization of $104 billion. On July 13, 2015, Facebook became the fastest company in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to reach a market cap of $250 billion.[11] Facebook has more than 1.86 billion monthly active users as of December 31, 2016.[12] As of April 2016, Facebook was the most popular social networking site in the world, based on the number of active user accounts.[13] Facebook classifies users from the ages of 13 to 18 as minors and therefore sets their profiles to share content with friends only.[14]

2003–06: Thefacebook, Thiel investment, and name change

Zuckerberg wrote a program called "Facemash" on October 28, 2003 while attending Harvard University as a sophomore (second year student). According to The Harvard Crimson, the site was comparable to Hot or Not and used "photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the 'hotter' person".[15][16][17]

To accomplish this, Zuckerberg hacked into protected areas of Harvard's computer network and copied private dormitory ID images. Harvard did not have a student "face book" (a directory with photos and basic information) at the time, although individual houses had been issuing their own paper facebooks since the mid-1980s, and Harvard's longtime Freshman Yearbook was colloquially referred to as the "Freshman Facebook". Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online.[15][18]

The site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg faced expulsion and was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy. Ultimately, the charges were dropped.[19] Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final exam. He uploaded 500 Augustan images to a website, each of which was featured with a corresponding comments section.[18] He shared the site with his classmates, and people started sharing notes.

Original layout and name of Thefacebook, 2004.

The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004. He said that he was inspired by an editorial about the Facemash incident in The Harvard Crimson.[20] On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.[21]

Six days after the site launched, Harvard seniors Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing that he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com. They claimed that he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product.[22] The three complained to The Harvard Crimson and the newspaper began an investigation. They later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling in 2008[23] for 1.2 million shares (worth $300 million at Facebook's IPO).[24]

In mid-2004, entrepreneur Sean Parker—an informal advisor to Zuckerberg—became the company's president.[29] In June 2004, Facebook moved its operations base to Palo Alto, California.[26] It received its first investment later that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.[30] In 2005, the company dropped "the" from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com for US$200,000.[31] The domain facebook.com belonged to AboutFace Corporation before the purchase. This website last appeared on April 8, 2005;[32] from April 10, 2005 to August 4, 2005, this domain gave a 403 error.[33]

In May 2005, Accel Partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer[34] added $1 million of his own money. A high-school version of the site was launched in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step.[35] (At the time, high-school networks required an invitation to join.)[36] Facebook also expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.[37]

2006–2012: public access, Microsoft alliance and rapid growth

In late 2007, Facebook had 100,000 business pages (pages which allowed companies to promote themselves and attract customers). These started as group pages, but a new concept called company pages was planned.[41]Pages began rolling out for businesses in May 2009.[42]

On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion.[43] Microsoft's purchase included rights to place international advertisements on the social networking site.[44]

In October 2008, Facebook announced that it would set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.[45] Almost a year later, in September 2009, Facebook said that it had turned cash-flow positive for the first time.[46]

A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users.[47]Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"[48]

Traffic to Facebook increased steadily after 2009. The company announced 500 million users in July 2010[49] making it the largest online social network in the world at the time. According to the company's data, half of the site's membership use Facebook daily, for an average of 34 minutes, while 150 million users access the site by mobile. A company representative called the milestone a "quiet revolution."[50]

In November 2010, based on SecondMarket Inc. (an exchange for privately held companies' shares), Facebook's value was $41 billion. The company had slightly surpassed eBay to become the third largest American web company after Google and Amazon.com.[51]

In early 2011, Facebook announced plans to move its headquarters to the former Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California.[52][53] In March 2011, it was reported that Facebook was removing approximately 20,000 profiles offline every day for violations such as spam, graphic content, and underage use, as part of its efforts to boost cyber security.[54]

Release of statistics by DoubleClick showed that Facebook reached one trillion page views in the month of June 2011, making it the most visited website tracked by DoubleClick.[55] According to a Nielsen Media Research study, released in December 2011, Facebook had become the second-most accessed website in the U.S. behind Google.[56]

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Lee Cooper Brand is an English clothing company, operating worldwide, that licenses the sale of many Lee Cooper-branded items, including denimjeans. The head office is located in London, England. The company originally produced workwear for export, and began to specialise in denim jackets and trousers in the 1930s.

The brand that eventually became Lee Cooper was established in 1908 by Morris Cooper and a friend, Louis Maister, after they arrived in London from their hometown in Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire), having previously spent some time in South Africa. Operating under the name M. Cooper (Overalls) Ltd., from premises on Middlesex Street in London's East End, they began production of workwear, having identified a market for it in South Africa.[2]

During the years of the First World War, M. Cooper (Overalls), which by then employed over 600 people, halted production of workwear and began making uniforms, kit bags and rucksacks for the British Army. In 1937, a new factory dedicated to the manufacture of denim was opened in Stratford, with the business reporting a profit of £1,000 by year end.[3] The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 led Morris Cooper to split the business into two: one arm continued making workwear, while the other concentrated on producing military uniforms, battle fatigues and flight overalls. M. Cooper (Overalls) eventually became one of the biggest suppliers to His Majesty's Armed Forces.[4]

Morris Cooper died in 1940 and his son, Harold Cooper, took over the business upon his return from active service in the RAF. He set about modernising the company and building on its wartime success, switching focus to casual wear and denim production, and taking advantage of the introduction of clothes rationing to increase competitiveness.[5] As part of a re-branding strategy, the company was rechristened, with Harold adding a version of his wife's family name, Leigh, to his own to create "Lee Cooper".[6]

Lee Cooper jeans were adopted by the youth counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s and Harold capitalised on this association by sponsoring a Rolling Stones tour and working with Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. The company caused a degree of moral outrage in 1953 by introducing the zip-front to women's jeans,[7] and commissioned a series of bold publicity campaigns, some of them incorporating fictitious designers such as the Italian 'Alfredo Angelous' in order to appeal to subcultures such as the Mods, who favoured continental style.[8]

The late 1970s saw expansion of production, with the company opening factories in Ireland, France and Tunisia, and by the mid 1980s these facilities were producing between 40,000 and 45,000 garments per week. During this time, annual turnover grew to more than £100 million. Lee Cooper was also one of the main pitchside sponsors at the 1984 European Championships in France.

In 1989, the Cooper family sold their majority stake in the business, and since then Lee Cooper has become a 'lifestyle' brand, operating in more than seventy markets across the world. In 2008, the company celebrated its centenary.[9]

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

New features in the Windows release include the ability to create, open, edit, and save files in the cloud straight from the desktop, a new search tool for commands available in Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook named "Tell Me", more "Send As" options in Word and PowerPoint, and co-authoring in real time with users connected to Office Online.[13][14][15] Other smaller features include Insights, a feature powered by Bing to provide contextual information from the web, a Designer sidebar in PowerPoint to optimize the layout of slides, new chart types and templates in Excel (such as treemap, sunburst chart (also known as a ring chart), waterfall chart, box plot and histogram, and financial and calendar templates), new animations in PowerPoint (such as the Morph transition), the ability to insert online video in OneNote, and a data loss prevention feature in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.[14][15]

Microsoft Office 2016 cannot coexist with Microsoft Office 2013 apps, but it can coexist with earlier versions of Microsoft Office, such as 2003, 2007, and 2010.[16] Microsoft offers to freely replace these older 2013 versions with an updated version.[17]

As with previous versions, Office 2016 is made available in several distinct editions aimed towards different markets. All traditional editions of Microsoft Office 2016 contain Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote and are licensed for use on one computer.[22][23]

Five traditional editions of Office 2016 were released for Windows:

Home & Student: This retail suite includes the core applications only.[22]

Home & Business: This retail suite includes the core applications and Outlook.[22]

Thursday, February 9, 2017

The Taj Mahal of Agra is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, for reasons more than just looking magnificent. It's the history of Taj Mahal that adds a soul to its magnificence: a soul that is filled with love, loss, remorse, and love again. Because if it was not for love, the world would have been robbed of a fine example upon which people base their relationships. An example of how deeply a man loved his wife, that even after she remained but a memory, he made sure that this memory would never fade away. This man was the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, who was head-over-heels in love with Mumtaz Mahal, his dear wife. She was a Muslim Persian princess (her name Arjumand Banu Begum before marriage) and he was the son of the Mughal Emperor Jehangir and grandson of Akbar the Great. It was at the age of 14 that he met Mumtaz and fell in love with her. Five years later in the year 1612, they got married.

Mumtaz Mahal, an inseparable companion of Shah Jahan, died in 1631, while giving birth to their 14th child. It was in the memory of his beloved wife that Shah Jahan built a magnificent monument as a tribute to her, which we today know as the "Taj Mahal". The construction of Taj Mahal started in the year 1631. Masons, stonecutters, inlayers, carvers, painters, calligraphers, dome-builders and other artisans were requisitioned from the whole of the empire and also from Central Asia and Iran, and it took approximately 22 years to build what we see today. An epitome of love, it made use of the services of 22,000 laborers and 1,000 elephants. The monument was built entirely out of white marble, which was brought in from all over India and central Asia. After an expenditure of approximately 32 million rupees, Taj Mahal was finally completed in the year 1653.

It was soon after the completion of Taj Mahal that Shah Jahan was deposed by his own son Aurangzeb and was put under house arrest at nearby Agra Fort. Shah Jahan, himself also, lies entombed in this mausoleum along with his wife. Moving further down the history, it was at the end of the 19th century that British Viceroy Lord Curzon ordered a sweeping restoration project, which was completed in 1908, as a measure to restore what was lost during the Indian rebellion of 1857: Taj being blemished by British soldiers and government officials who also deprived the monument of its immaculate beauty by chiseling out precious stones and lapis lazuli from its walls. Also, the British style lawns that we see today adding on to the beauty of Taj were remodeled around the same time. Despite prevailing controversies, past and present threats from Indo-Pak war and environmental pollution, this epitome of love continuous to shine and attract people from all over the world.

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion for computer programming, sought to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills.[17] In 1972 they founded their first company, named Traf-O-Data, which offered a rudimentary computer that tracked and analyzed automobile traffic data. Allen went on to pursue a degree in computer science at Washington State University, later dropping out of school to work at Honeywell. Gates began studies at Harvard.[18] The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems's (MITS) Altair 8800microcomputer.[19] Allen suggested that they could program a BASICinterpreter for the device; after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didn't actually have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter. Although they developed the interpreter on a simulator and not the actual device, the interpreter worked flawlessly when they demonstrated the interpreter to MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico in March 1975; MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as Altair BASIC.[16]:108, 112–114 They officially established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as the CEO.[20] Allen came up with the original name of "Micro-Soft," as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article.[21][22] In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, "ASCII Microsoft".[23] The company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979.[20]Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, called Xenix.[24] However, it was MS-DOS that solidified the company's dominance. After negotiations with Digital Research failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980 to provide a version of the CP/M OS, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC).[25] For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, which IBM rebranded to PC DOS. Following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to reverse engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles, but no such restriction applied to the operating systems. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOS's available software selection, Microsoft eventually became the leading PC operating systems vendor.[26][27]:210 The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press.[16]:232 Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkin's disease.While jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20, 1985.[16]:242–243, 246 Microsoft moved its headquarters to Redmond on February 26, 1986, and on March 13 the company went public;[28] the ensuing rise in the stock would make an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees.[29] Due to the partnership with IBM, in 1990 the Federal Trade Commission set its eye on Microsoft for possible collusion; it marked the beginning of over a decade of legal clashes with the U.S. government.[30] Microsoft released its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on April 2, 1987;[16]:243–244meanwhile, the company was at work on a 32-bit OS, Microsoft Windows NT, using ideas from OS/2; it shipped on July 21, 1993, with a new modularkernel and the Win32application programming interface (API), making porting from 16-bit (MS-DOS-based) Windows easier. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated.[31]In 1990, Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office. The software bundled separate office productivity applications, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.[16]:301 On May 22 Microsoft launched Windows 3.0 with a streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor.[32] Both Office and Windows became dominant in their respective areas.[33][34]Novell, a Word competitor from 1984–1986, filed a lawsuit years later claiming that Microsoft left part of its APIs undocumented in order to gain a competitive advantage.[35]On July 27, 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division filed a Competitive Impact Statement that said, in part: "Beginning in 1988, and continuing until July 15, 1994, Microsoft induced many OEMs to execute anti-competitive "per processor" licenses. Under a per processor license, an OEM pays Microsoft a royalty for each computer it sells containing a particular microprocessor, whether the OEM sells the computer with a Microsoft operating system or a non-Microsoft operating system. In effect, the royalty payment to Microsoft when no Microsoft product is being used acts as a penalty, or tax, on the OEM's use of a competing PC operating system. Since 1988, Microsoft's use of per processor licenses has increased."[36]Following Bill Gates's internal "Internet Tidal Wave memo" on May 26, 1995, Microsoft began to redefine its offerings and expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web.[37] The company released Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, featuring pre-emptive multitasking, a completely new user interface with a novel start button, and 32-bit compatibility; similar to NT, it provided the Win32 API.[38][39]:20 Windows 95 came bundled with the online serviceMSN (which was at first intended to be a competitor to the Internet), and for OEMs Internet Explorer, a web browser. Internet Explorer was not bundled with the retail Windows 95 boxes because the boxes were printed before the team finished the web browser, and instead was included in the Windows 95 Plus! pack.[40] Branching out into new markets in 1996, Microsoft and NBC Universal created a new 24/7 cable news station, MSNBC.[41] Microsoft created Windows CE 1.0, a new OS designed for devices with low memory and other constraints, such as personal digital assistants.[42] In October 1997, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court, stating that Microsoft violated an agreement signed in 1994 and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.[16]:323–324In 1996, Microsoft released Windows CE, a version of the operating system meant for personal digital assistants and other tiny computers.Bill Gates handed over the CEO position on January 13, 2000, to Steve Ballmer, an old college friend of Gates and employee of the company since 1980, creating a new position for himself as Chief Software Architect.[16]:111, 228[20] Various companies including Microsoft formed the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance in October 1999 to, among other things, increase security and protect intellectual property through identifying changes in hardware and software. Critics decry the alliance as a way to enforce indiscriminate restrictions over how consumers use software, and over how computers behave, a form of digital rights management; for example the scenario where a computer is not only secured for its owner, but also secured against its owner as well.[43][44] On April 3, 2000, a judgment was handed down in the case of United States v. Microsoft,[45] calling the company an "abusive monopoly";[46] it settled with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2004.[28] On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, unifying the mainstream and NT lines under the NT codebase.[47] The company released the Xbox later that year, entering the game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo.[48] In March 2004 the European Union brought antitrust legal action against the company, citing it abused its dominance with the Windows OS, resulting in a judgment of €497million ($613million) and to produce new versions of Windows XP without Windows Media Player, Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N.[49][50]2007–2011: Windows Vista, mobile, and Windows 7CEO Steve Ballmer at the MIX event in 2008. In an interview about his management style in 2005, he mentioned that his first priority was to get the people he delegates to in order. Ballmer also emphasized the need to continue pursuing new technologies even if initial attempts fail, citing the original attempts with Windows as an example.[51]Released in January 2007, the next version of Windows, Windows Vista, focused on features, security and a redesigned user interface dubbed Aero.[52][53]Microsoft Office 2007, released at the same time, featured a "Ribbon" user interface which was a significant departure from its predecessors. Relatively strong sales of both titles helped to produce a record profit in 2007.[54] The European Union imposed another fine of €899million ($1.4billion) for Microsoft's lack of compliance with the March 2004 judgment on February 27, 2008, saying that the company charged rivals unreasonable prices for key information about its workgroup and backoffice servers. Microsoft stated that it was in compliance and that "these fines are about the past issues that have been resolved".[55] 2007 also saw the creation of a multi-core unit at Microsoft, as they followed in the steps of server companies such as Sun and IBM.[56]Gates retired from his role as Chief Software Architect on June 27, 2008, a decision announced in June 2006, while retaining other positions related to the company in addition to being an advisor for the company on key projects.[57][58]Azure Services Platform, the company's entry into the cloud computing market for Windows, launched on October 27, 2008.[59] On February 12, 2009, Microsoft announced its intent to open a chain of Microsoft-branded retail stores, and on October 22, 2009, the first retail Microsoft Store opened in Scottsdale, Arizona; the same day the first store opened, Windows 7 was officially released to the public. Windows 7's focus was on refining Vista with ease of use features and performance enhancements, rather than a large reworking of Windows.[60][61][62]As the smartphone industry boomed beginning in 2007, Microsoft struggled to keep up with its rivals Apple and Google in providing a modern smartphone operating system. As a result, in 2010, Microsoft revamped their aging flagship mobile operating system, Windows Mobile, replacing it with the new Windows Phone OS; along with a new strategy in the smartphone industry that had Microsoft working more closely with smartphone manufacturers, such as Nokia, and to provide a consistent user experience across all smartphones using Microsoft's Windows Phone OS. It used a new user interface design language, codenamed "Metro", which prominently used simple shapes, typography and iconography, and the concept of minimalism. Microsoft is a founding member of the Open Networking Foundation started on March 23, 2011. Other founding companies include Google, HP Networking, Yahoo, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom and 17 other companies. The nonprofit organization is focused on providing support for a new cloud computing initiative called Software-Defined Networking.[63] The initiative is meant to speed innovation through simple software changes in telecommunications networks, wireless networks, data centers and other networking areas.[64]2011–2014: Rebranding, Windows 8, Surface and Nokia devicesStart screen on Windows 8.1Surface Pro 3, part of the Surface series of laplets by MicrosoftFollowing the release of Windows Phone, Microsoft underwent a gradual rebranding of its product range throughout 2011 and 2012—the corporation's logos, products, services and websites adopted the principles and concepts of the Metro design language.[65] Microsoft previewed Windows 8, an operating system designed to power both personal computers and tablet computers, in Taipei in June 2011.[66] A developer preview was released on September 13, and was replaced by a consumer preview on February 29, 2012.[67] On May 31, 2012, the preview version was released. On June 18, 2012, Microsoft unveiled the Surface, the first computer in the company's history to have its hardware made by Microsoft.[68][69] On June 25, Microsoft paid US$1.2 billion to buy the social network Yammer.[70] On July 31, 2012, Microsoft launched the Outlook.comwebmail service to compete with Gmail.[71] On September 4, 2012, Microsoft released Windows Server 2012.[72]In July 2012, Microsoft sold its 50% stake in MSNBC.com, which it had run as a joint venture with NBC since 1996.[73] On October 1, Microsoft announced its intention to launch a news operation, part of a new-look MSN, at the time of the Windows 8 launch that was later in the month.[74] On October 26, 2012, Microsoft launched Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface.[69][75] Three days later, Windows Phone 8 was launched.[76] To cope with the potential for an increase in demand for products and services, Microsoft opened a number of "holiday stores" across the U.S. to complement the increasing number of "bricks-and-mortar" Microsoft Stores that opened in 2012.[77] On March 29, 2013, Microsoft launched a Patent Tracker.[78]The Kinect, a motion-sensing input device made by Microsoft and designed as a video game controller, which was first introduced in November 2010, was upgraded for the 2013 release of the eighth-generation Xbox One video game console. Kinect's capabilities were revealed in May 2013. The new Kinect uses an ultra-wide 1080p camera, it can function in the dark due to an infrared sensor, it employs higher-end processing power and new software, it can distinguish between fine movements (such as a thumb movements), and the device can determine a user's heart rate by looking at his/her face.[79] Microsoft filed a patent application in 2011 that suggests that the corporation may use the Kinect camera system to monitor the behavior of television viewers as part of a plan to make the viewing experience more interactive. On July 19, 2013, Microsoft stocks suffered its biggest one-day percentage sell-off since the year 2000 after its fourth-quarter report raised concerns among the investors on the poor showings of both Windows 8 and the Surface tablet; with more than 11 percentage points declining Microsoft suffered a loss of more than US$32 billion.[80] For the 2010 fiscal year, Microsoft had five product divisions: Windows Division, Server and Tools, Online Services Division, Microsoft Business Division and Entertainment and Devices Division.On September 3, 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy Nokia's mobile unit for $7 billion.[81] Also in 2013, Amy Hood became the CFO of Microsoft.[82] The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) was launched in October 2013 and Microsoft was part of the coalition of public and private organizations that also included Facebook, Intel and Google. Led by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, the A4AI seeks to make Internet access more affordable so that access is broadened in the developing world, where only 31% of people are online. Google will help to decrease Internet access prices so that they fall below the UN Broadband Commission's worldwide target of 5% of monthly income.[83] In line with the maturing PC business, in July 2013, Microsoft announced that it would reorganize the business into four new business divisions by function: Operating System, Apps, Cloud and Devices. All previous divisions will be diluted into new divisions without any workforce cut.[84]2014–present: Windows 10, Minecraft, HoloLensA depiction of a Microsoft HoloLens user navigating the shell, with an application window on the left, and the Start menu on the rightCorporate affairsOn February 4, 2014, Steve Ballmer stepped down as CEO of Microsoft and was succeeded by Satya Nadella, who previously led Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise division.[85] On the same day, John W. Thompson took on the role of chairman, with Bill Gates stepping down from the position, while continuing to participate as a technology advisor.[86]On April 25, 2014, Microsoft acquired Nokia Devices and Services for $7.2 billion.[87] The new subsidiary was renamed Microsoft Mobile Oy.[88] In May 2016, the company announced it will lay off 1,850 workers, taking an impairment and restructuring charge of $950 million. During the previous summer of 2015 the company wrote down $7.6 billion related to its mobile-phone business and fired 7,800 employees from those operations.[89]On September 15, 2014, Microsoft acquired the video game development company Mojang, best known for its wildly popular flagship game Minecraft, for $2.5 billion.[90]ProductsOn January 21, 2015, Microsoft announced the release of their first Interactive whiteboard, Microsoft Surface Hub (part of the Surface family.)[91] On July 29, 2015, Microsoft released the next version of the Windows operating system, Windows 10.[92] Its server sibling, Windows Server 2016, was released in September 2016.In Q1 2015, Microsoft was the third largest maker of mobile phones selling 33 million units (7.2% of all), while a large majority (at least 75%) of them do not run any version of Windows Phone – those other phones are not categorized as smartphones by Gartner – in the same time frame 8 million Windows smartphones (2.5% of all smartphones) were made by all manufacturers (but mostly by Microsoft).[13] Microsoft's share of the U.S. smartphone market in January 2016 was 2.7%.[93]On March 1, 2016, Microsoft announced the merger of its PC and Xbox divisions, with Phil Spencer announcing that Universal Windows Applications would be the focus for Microsoft's gaming in the future.[94]On January 24, 2017, Microsoft showcased Intune for Education at the BETT 2017 education technology conference in London.[95] Intune for Education is a new cloud-based application and device management service for the education sector.[96] Microsoft will launch a preview of Intune for Education "in the coming weeks", with general availability scheduled for spring 2017, priced at $30 per device, or through volume licensing agreements.[97]ServicesIn June 2016, Microsoft announced a project named, Microsoft Azure Information Protection. It aims to help enterprises protect their data as it moves between servers and devices.[98]In November 2016, Microsoft has joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member during Microsoft’s Connect(); developer event in New York.[99] Price of each platinum membership is $500,000 USD per year.[100]